


James "Bucky" Barnes and The Avengers

by malome78



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 22:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13280778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malome78/pseuds/malome78
Summary: This is the story of how the Avengers movies would have gone if James '"Bucky" Barnes was found at the end of CA:TFA instead of Steve Rogers. This is a result of the Steve and Bucky Big Bang Slack chat.





	1. Chapter 1

Prologue:  
  


In an undisclosed area around Northern Kazakhstan, a group of SHIELD agents are milling about by the foot of a long-abandoned suspended railway bridge. Suddenly a helicopter is heard in the distance. The agents start to scramble and make way towards a makeshift landing pad. A man in a standard black suit, white shirt, black tie, and aviators disembarked the helicopter. He seeks out the scientist and lead agent on the scene.  


“Are you the guys from Washington?” The SHIELD scientist asks.  


“You get many other visitors out here?” The man with the aviator's replies. “How long have you been on site?”  


"Since this morning. Our Russian team called it in about eighteen hours ago.” the lead agent replied.  


“How come nobody spotted it before?” Aviators asked.  


“It's really not that surprising. This landscape is changing all the time. You got any ideas who this person is exactly?”  


“I don't know. It's a WWII soldier, there were many supply lines that ran through here during the war”  


“You know we don't have the equipment for a job like this.”  


“How long before we start thawing him out?”  


“I don't think you quite understand. You guys are going to need to be careful, controlled and slow-moving if you want any hope of discerning his identity!”  


One of the scientist's chips away at some ice what is revealed to be a frozen body. They all carefully chip away the ice away with the same care as a group of archaeologists excavating the remains of some extinct civilization. The man with the aviators is looking for the agent's work when suddenly he put a halt to all activity.  


“What is it?” one of the confused agents asked.  


“My God!” the man with the aviators exclaimed. He pointed to the patch on the frozen corpses navy blue peacoat. “Base, give me a line to Colonel Fury”.  


“It's three a.m. for him, Agent Coulson.” The voice on the line protested.  


“I don't care what time it is. Tell him I found Barnes. This guy has been waiting long enough.” Coulson spat as he terminated the call.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 1:  
  


A few weeks later James ‘Bucky’ Barnes woke up in a hospital room. The room is styled after a1940's hospital and he can hear a baseball game on an old radio. Nick Fury did this on purpose. There’s no knowing what kind of condition Sgt. Barnes’s in, or what kind of person he really is. Nostalgia has a funny way of erasing the bad parts of people’s true colors. 

After spending decades in the ice, and the trauma of falling off the bridge who knows what shape Barnes’ mind is really in. Nick Fury instructs his people to build a stage, and make sure it is nearly one hundred percent accurate. Maybe the real Barnes’ not really the loyal servant to Captain America; maybe he was just riding the coattails of his talented and powerful friend. Maybe he’s not gonna be The Howling Commando guy anymore. On the flipside, if he really is smart, then putting him in a standard, modern hospital room and telling him the truth is going to have him clamming up and refusing to believe a goddamn fucking thing he hears for a really long time. 

The real question here is, how long it does it take for the man, the myth, the legend to notice? I the Sergeant still sharp after everything that’s happened? How will he handle everything? How long does he wait to get his bearings, confirm his suspicions, and gather information before making his move? 

The answer was not fucking long at all. 

Fury and Coulson were sitting in the next room when Barnes came to. 

“Good morning. Or should I say, afternoon.” A pretty agent in a vintage uniform greeted the freshly awoken man. 

“Where am I?” Bucky asked. 

“You're in a recovery room in New York city.” the agent replied. 

Bucky eyed the woman, to an outsider it looked like he was checking her out, but really he was categorizing all of the things wrong with the set up. “Where am I really?” 

“I'm afraid I don't understand.” The woman asked as her eyebrows knitted. 

“You want to play this game doll? Alright, first you aren’t in any uniform I’ve ever seen a woman wearing. Second, your hair and your underthings ain’t what any self respecting American woman would be wearing. The real kicker is that game. Ya see, it's from May, nineteen forty one. I know, cause I was there.” Bucky got up and rose to his feet shakily. “Now, I'm gonna ask you again. Where am I? Last thing I remember is falling from a train near the Russian/ German conflict line. The way I see it is I must be stashed away by either the Krauts or the Commies. Or of course none of that matters at all and this is another Hydra set up.” 

The woman started to back toward the door cautiously. “Sergeant Barnes?” 

“Who are you? You think I’m fooled because they sent a dame? I have destroyed over two hundred Hydra facilities, you think I didn’t see some things?” Bucky asked calmly but with steal in his voice. 

Two soldiers in black uniforms enter the room and Bucky knocked them through the wall with two well placed punches. He looked at his hand in astonishment. Gone was his whole left arm, and in it’s place was a robotic replacement. Bucky filed the new horror away and repressed it until he was in a safer situation to deal with it. 

“Sergeant Barnes, wait!” the pretty agent called as Bucky ran out the door. Bucky turned back and saw that he was on a some kind of made up set. He continued to run out of there. When he exited the building he found himself in Times Square, not as he remembered it, but the current version. As he took in his surroundings in shock he was circled by numerous black SUVs. Colonel Fury stepped out of one of the vehicles and approached Bucky. 

“At ease soldier! Look, I'm sorry about that little show back there. But we thought it best to break it to you slowly.” Fury said cautiously. 

“Break what?” Bucky asked suspiciously. 

“You've been asleep. For almost seventy years.” Fury explained as Bucky looked around in shock. “Are you gonna be okay?” 

“Hell no” Bucky responded tiredly as the weight of all the revelations caught up with him.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 2:  
  


Bucky is in a public rifle club shooting at targets down an Olympic caliber ten-meter facility. Nick Fury approached him with a thick folder. 

“Trouble sleeping?” Nick asked. 

“Not at all, two weeks ago I woke up. My best friend committed suicide a few days after I fell from a train. I lost my arm and then I find out I lost seventy years of time too. But yeah I’m fucking dandy!” Bucky snapped. 

“No one is expecting you to be okay son.” Fury answered raising his hands in mock surrender. 

“Are you here with a mission, or is this a social call?” Bucky asked annoyed. 

“I am here with a mission.” Fury admitted. 

“Figures, the only time anyone important checked up on me was when they needed me to go be cannon fodder. I was drafted into the war. I went into the Howling Commandos to watch my punk ass best friend’s back. Now what? What is your noble cause? What do you need a soldier for? Or is it the sniper. Maybe you need everything I know about Captain America, Howard Stark, and the whole Hydra mess?” Bucky spat. 

“All of the above I am afraid.” Nick replied with a chuckle. If anyone else talked to him like that, they would soon regret it. Nick Fury couldn’t bring himself to find even a trace of himself that was annoyed be the sergeant’s attitude. Despite his lack of respect and his surly attitude, Nick couldn’t help liking Sergeant Barnes. He felt as if he had a kindred spirit there. 

“With all due respect, Fuck off. I earned an honorable discharge after Azzano, I was a Commando because of a little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. He’s gone.” Bucky replied as he quickly and angrily disassembled his rifle with expert speed. 

“Son, we both know that you are going to go out there and try and save the world. I need you to cut the bullshit.” Fury commanded tiredly. 

Bucky stopped in his tracks and turned and let loose a genuine grin. The first one he had since waking up armless in the 21st century. “Alright, not like I have a date or anything.” he took the folder from Fury and looked over everything. When he got to the pictures of a small blue cube he dropped the folder. “Fuck! You guys had to go and scrounge that up from the bottom of the ocean, didn’t you? Amazing how you can find that fucking thing, but the man who died to save it is still lost to the world.” 

“Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for Captain America. He thought what we think. The Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs.” Fury explained. 

“Of fucking course! Howard Stark was a fucking mad genius, and we should all be glad he was on our side in the war. I’m surprised he didn’t find Steve. He had some kind of god complex in his role in the serum transformation. The guy was the world's smartest dumbass.” Bucky ranted. 

Fury chuckled at that. “Well, at least I know you and Tony will have some common ground.” 

“Yeah, Stark’s kid and I will be best of friends, now tell me how did you numbskulls lose HYDRA’s secret weapon?” Bucky asked incredulously. 

“He's called Loki. He's not from around here. There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know.” 

Bucky let loose another sincere laugh. “I once saw a man peel his face off, my scrawny asthmatic friend with a limp and scoliosis become a sex symbol and war hero, weapons that dissolved tanks into pure energy. Plus, I am the world's prettiest nonagenarian right now. I highly fucking doubt anything is going to catch me off my goddamn guard.” He replied scornfully. 

“Ten bucks says you're wrong,” Fury added. 

Bucky held out his metal hand. “Oh hell and Christ, I’ll take that bet pal.” 

Fury took the offered hand. “There's a debriefing packet waiting for you back at your apartment. Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?” 

Bucky was already heading out the door when he called out over his shoulder. “Yeah, you eager beavers shoulda left it in the goddamn ocean.”


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 3

Bucky ended up sitting across from Agent Coulson on the way to his drop point. Bucky had forced Steve and enough dames on dates to know awkward situations and this one took the cake.  


“So, this Dr. Banner was trying to replicate the serum they used on Steve?”  


“A lot of people were. He was the world's first superhero. Banner thought gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula.”  


“Didn't really go his way, did it?”  


“Not so much. When he's not that thing, though, the guy's like a Stephen Hawking. He's like a smart person. I gotta say, it's an honor to meet you officially. I've sort of met you. I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping. I mean, I was present while you were unconscious from the ice. You know, it's really just a huge honor to have you on board. Is it true that you really knew Captain America?” Agent Coulson asked with reverence that Bucky was all too familiar with when it came to his post belated friends post-serum form.  


“Easy tiger, no need to get doll- dizzy. The Steve Roger’s I knew was a little shit. Nothing like the comics and war movies.”  


“Tell me everything” Coulson demanded. He hadn’t seen anyone this crazy about Cap since he was at that brothel in France. Same story though. People obsessed with the star-spangled man with a plan, and not really giving a fuck about the man who was Bucky’s best friend.  


The pilot interrupted the two men, much to Bucky’s relief. “We land in forty minutes”.  


Coulson handed Bucky a package. “Here I got you a uniform to put on.”  


The monstrosity in the package was a facsimile of Steve’s Captain America uniform from the USO shows. The main difference was that his uniform had black legs and arms instead of blue. “I hope I'm the man for the job. I never wanted to take Steve’s place in this thing”  


“Oh, you are. Absolutely. We made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input”  


“You think it's a good idea for me to go running around masquerading as Captain America. Isn’t the notion a little old-fashioned?”  


“With everything that's happening and the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old-fashioned. Who better to take up the mantle than his loyal sidekick” Coulson explained.  


Bucky went sour at that. The only thing he wanted was for people to stop focusing on his role as Steve’s assistant. The term sidekick rankled him. How could anyone understand the bond he and Steve had. How can you use a term like that to describe being closer than brothers? Even the Commandos didn’t know the extent of his and Steve’s relationship. It was the main reason everyone's condolences fell flat. No one could begin to realize what Bucky had truly lost.


End file.
